After reading the title, for one horrible moment I thought that James Cameron was going to drag the 13 year old film from its grave and milk it for yet more money by pointlessly converting it into 3-D for a new cinematic release in 2012.
Thank goodness that's not happening.
Atmospheric lensing? I haven't a clue to be honest. Where I live the moon's just peeked out from behind the clouds so I gave it a go - it was about 6 or 7mm, so my observations seem to fit the theory.
I think you, like a lot of people, have wildly overestimated the angular diameter of the full moon. It's about 30 arcminutes (0.5 degrees). It's a lot smaller than you think. It's one of the first things we were told in my astrophysics lectures, and it's stuck with me.
An angle of 0.5 degrees at arms length (~70cm) gives you approximately 70cm * tan(0.5 degrees) = 6.1mm (i.e. a circle of paper 6.1mm in diameter held 70cm from your eye would 'cover' the full moon). Try it.
3cm at arms length equates to an angle of about 2.5 degrees.
According to Wikipedia, the VIMOS has a 14 x 14 arcminute field of view.
If my Sunday afternoon trigonometry is correct, that's equivalent to a 3mm square held at arm's length (~70cm). Under half the diameter of the full moon. Hope that helps to put it into context - it's a tiny area of the sky.
I'm a Physics Undergrad at the University of Nottingham (UK). In the first year we are taught MATLAB as a core module. Many people found it very difficult, as only a small percentage (me included) of the class had any previous programming experience. A common opinion was that what we were learning was pointless. It mainly introduced the ideas of control structures and functions. The biggest hurdle for most people was 'seeing' how a question on a paper could be converted to a program.
In the second year MATLAB is used a lot in the practical lab sessions to record, analyse and display data. An optional module is Computational Physics, in which numerical methods are discussed and then implemented in C. The choice of language was somewhat arbitrary - we didn't go much beyond the basics of control structures, file handling, functions, etc. It was the method that was important. Since C is a lot more picky than MATLAB many people struggled, again, at first. My friends became quite frustrated with C, but as time passed they got used to the syntax and transferred their skills from MATLAB to C. At the end of the course many actually said they now preferred C to MATLAB (although it isn't an apples to apples comparison, really). In another module we did further work in MATLAB; this time using the built in functions to solve ODEs and perform FFTs.
We've learned important lessons:
Programming can make your life a lot easier.
Programming can make your life a lot harder. Knowing when to use it is important.
Programming is mostly a case of working out how to translate a problem into a procedure.
Once you know the basics, it's possible to transfer your skills between languages relatively easily.
I definitely agree that programming should be a core part of a science education. Not only is it important in research, it also gives the students an extra skill to put on their CV that could be the difference in getting or not getting a job.
I am a Physics undergrad student (so IAAP:P), and I've found Wikipedia to be an excellent source for mathematical information. The reason for this is the depth of information available. If, for example, I've forgotten a certain equation, my first port of call is Wikipedia:
The first section usually gives a concise overview.
The second gives the equations.
The third gives the derivation.
This is exactly what Wikipedia should be, in my opinion. I can get as much or as little information as I require, and I can't see any reason for intentionally removing or leaving out relevant data. I'm all for keeping articles free from pointless clutter, but derivations aren't pointless.
I thought Wikipedia was about "Free Access To All Human Knowledge", not "Free Access To A Good Percentage of Quite a Lot of Human Knowledge, But Some Things You'll Just Have To Accept, OK?".
Slashdot Mirror
After reading the title, for one horrible moment I thought that James Cameron was going to drag the 13 year old film from its grave and milk it for yet more money by pointlessly converting it into 3-D for a new cinematic release in 2012. Thank goodness that's not happening.
So if Safari has this great performance, how can the FF figure out how Safari does it?
By heading over to WebKit.org and downloading the open source rendering engine it uses?
Atmospheric lensing? I haven't a clue to be honest. Where I live the moon's just peeked out from behind the clouds so I gave it a go - it was about 6 or 7mm, so my observations seem to fit the theory.
I think you, like a lot of people, have wildly overestimated the angular diameter of the full moon. It's about 30 arcminutes (0.5 degrees). It's a lot smaller than you think. It's one of the first things we were told in my astrophysics lectures, and it's stuck with me.
An angle of 0.5 degrees at arms length (~70cm) gives you approximately 70cm * tan(0.5 degrees) = 6.1mm (i.e. a circle of paper 6.1mm in diameter held 70cm from your eye would 'cover' the full moon). Try it.
3cm at arms length equates to an angle of about 2.5 degrees.
According to Wikipedia, the VIMOS has a 14 x 14 arcminute field of view. If my Sunday afternoon trigonometry is correct, that's equivalent to a 3mm square held at arm's length (~70cm). Under half the diameter of the full moon. Hope that helps to put it into context - it's a tiny area of the sky.
In the second year MATLAB is used a lot in the practical lab sessions to record, analyse and display data. An optional module is Computational Physics, in which numerical methods are discussed and then implemented in C. The choice of language was somewhat arbitrary - we didn't go much beyond the basics of control structures, file handling, functions, etc. It was the method that was important. Since C is a lot more picky than MATLAB many people struggled, again, at first. My friends became quite frustrated with C, but as time passed they got used to the syntax and transferred their skills from MATLAB to C. At the end of the course many actually said they now preferred C to MATLAB (although it isn't an apples to apples comparison, really). In another module we did further work in MATLAB; this time using the built in functions to solve ODEs and perform FFTs.
We've learned important lessons:
- Programming can make your life a lot easier.
- Programming can make your life a lot harder. Knowing when to use it is important.
- Programming is mostly a case of working out how to translate a problem into a procedure.
- Once you know the basics, it's possible to transfer your skills between languages relatively easily.
I definitely agree that programming should be a core part of a science education. Not only is it important in research, it also gives the students an extra skill to put on their CV that could be the difference in getting or not getting a job.I am a Physics undergrad student (so IAAP :P), and I've found Wikipedia to be an excellent source for mathematical information. The reason for this is the depth of information available. If, for example, I've forgotten a certain equation, my first port of call is Wikipedia:
The first section usually gives a concise overview.
The second gives the equations.
The third gives the derivation.
This is exactly what Wikipedia should be, in my opinion. I can get as much or as little information as I require, and I can't see any reason for intentionally removing or leaving out relevant data. I'm all for keeping articles free from pointless clutter, but derivations aren't pointless.
I thought Wikipedia was about "Free Access To All Human Knowledge", not "Free Access To A Good Percentage of Quite a Lot of Human Knowledge, But Some Things You'll Just Have To Accept, OK?".